They were all staring at him.
He was sitting on the ground in his suitcase. He had been feeding the Diricawls, but now they were here, standing in a circle around him. Watching him, with their hooked beaks like Augureys and their red and black checkerboard skin. They were all tall and thin. Why were they watching him? Couldn't they just leave him alone?
Then the scene shifted. The surrounding vegetation of his suitcase morphed into a restaurant. He stood up cautiously. The floor had a black and white checkerboard pattern. The walls were light brown, with a texture like paper fans, but the ridges were longer and more pointed. There were a few tables nearby. They were all empty.
"Hello?" he called. "Is anyone there?"
No one answered. His voice echoed in the empty room. It was a long corridor. He started walking down it.
As he walked past the tables, people appeared in them, all couples wearing fancy clothing, eating and happily talking to each other. He looked down, and realized he was wearing fancy clothing too: a black jacket with black pants and a white shirt.
The corridor had opened up into a large room, most likely an auditorium. There were tables everywhere. Natural light streamed in from the ceiling.
He was near the stage, and a woman was talking to him. She was young, perhaps 25, with dark hair cut short and bright red lipstick. She was wearing a hat, fancy clothing like the others, and an Occamy around her neck, which seemed a very silly thing to do and not at all comfortable for the Occamy. He tried to tell her to take the Occamy off her neck, but she laughed like he had said something funny, and the Occamy turned into a pink fur boa. Trying to be polite, he asked her her name. She said it was Anne, and laughed like before.
There was a slight commotion near the entrance to the auditorium. He looked up and saw Tina standing there, wearing all white. Her clothing was ripped, torn, and covered with dirt, a sharp contrast to all the sharply dressed people around her. He made a hurried excuse to Anne, and stepped through the crowd to Tina.
Tina asked him if he knew he was wearing a top hat. He didn't. He took it off and offered it to her. She said she didn't want it, he should take it back, and besides it would get dirty if she put it on, but he said he didn't want it either because it looked ridiculous. He asked her why she was covered in dirt - did she climb a mountain? She thought he was just trying to be nice, which wasn't true. There was nothing wrong with being covered in dirt. He told her this, and mentioned that some beasts took dust baths to clean themselves, so maybe she was trying it out? She laughed at this, assured him she would never take a dust bath and looked up at him with those strangely glowing eyes. He smiled. He took Tina's hand. They started walking into the restaurant-auditorium. Nobody looked at them.
"Knarls," he said suddenly.
"Knarls?" Tina asked.
"Knarls take dust baths," he explained.
"I see."
They walked path the tables with the sharply dressed people. He glanced at them for a moment, and when he glanced back, Tina was wearing a beautiful green dress made of a shimmering green fabric. Then the dress morphed into a deep forest-green velvet, his favorite color. He said her dress looked nice, but assured her that the dirt she had been covered in previously was nice too, and that it didn't really matter because it was a dream. At least he thought it was a dream. Tina assured him it was a dream. The couples at the tables stared at them with unblinking eyes.
Then everyone was wearing dark green hats, which made them look like bushes. They wore all green clothing too. They all stood up out of their seats in the auditorium in a wave of green and stared at him and Tina.
Tina told him she had to go, that he had to wake up. He asked her not to leave. She promised she would return. He pulled her into an embrace, and she hugged him back. She was warm and smelled like lavender. The crowd swirled up into a wave, spinning faster and faster, and Tina melted away. He was left alone, yelling for her to come back.
"Tina! TINA!"
He screamed into the swirling wave. Nobody heard him. She wasn't there. She wasn't coming. But he was in an aquarium, behind the glass, and the glass wall was concave and coming towards him, crushing the space, and his cries bounced off the walls to be heard by his ears alone.
"TINA!"
He heard a voice. Jacob's voice. "Should we wake him up?"
Tina's voice: "No, let him sleep. It's been a long day."
Newt opened his eyes.